#writing

"I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa's gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don't like no fancy stuff like that. He don't even like word writin'. Kinda scare 'im, I guess. Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im."

"I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing."

"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."

"If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings."

"I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit."

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

"...at some point you need to stop looking out at others and start looking inward, at yourself, at your own accomplishments, at your own foibles, at your own successes and your own failures. It's only when you begin to look inward that you can begin to have an effect on those out there, the ones with the greedy eyes and outstretched hands."

"Trying to live up to yourself is the most trying thing."

"A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise."

"I'm not a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer. I just have a vivid imagination and type 90 WPM."

"I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love."

"I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go."

"A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world."[Speech upon being awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]"

"Writing is prayer."

"If I’m going to write a book every American will want to read, it’s got to have lots of pictures. Those pictures must also move, and all the words in the book must be spoken and available audibly for all the readers to hear as they watch."

"The shame of being a man - is there any better reason to write?"

"Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff."

"Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds."

"As a fiction writer, let me make it up, and let me make it up to you. I’ll pen our love story, if you’ll be my co-author."

"A new word. Bright with possibilities. A flawless pearl to turn over and over in my hand, then put away for safekeeping."